Bank Of England Holds Rates Steady At 0.50%

The Bank of England held interest rates
steady at 0.50% in an announcement today.

It also maintained its asset purchase target at 275 billion
pounds ($430 billion).

This amounts to a continuation of the low policy rate that the
BOE has maintained since March 2009. The bank announced a new
round of quantitative easing back in October when it increased
its asset purchases by 75 billion pounds sterling.

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today voted to
maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves
at 0.5%. The Committee also voted to continue with its programme
of asset purchases totalling £275 billion financed by the
issuance of central bank reserves.

The Committee expects the announced programme to take another two
months to complete. The scale of the programme will be kept under
review.

The minutes of the meeting will be published at 9.30am on
Wednesday 21 December.

Note to Editors

The previous change in Bank Rate was a reduction of 0.5
percentage points to 0.5% on 5 March 2009. A programme of asset
purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves was
initiated on 5 March 2009. The previous change in the size of
that programme was an increase of £75 billion to a total of £275
billion on 6 October 2011.

The Bank will continue to offer to purchase high-quality private
sector assets on behalf of the Treasury, financed by the issue of
Treasury bills, in line with the arrangements announced on 29
January 2009 and 29 November 2011.